Terry Gross interview

I chose to listen to Terry Gross interview Jan Crawford Greensberg in an NPR story called Composition and Control of the Supreme Court. It was in the Politics and Society section of Tuesday's Fresh Air show.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

I was really impressed on how much Gross knew about Greensberg's book (Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court) before interviewing her. She must have done a lot of backgrounding before conducting the interview because she was able to cite passages from the book, as well as comment and ask questions on topics related to the book.

The first aspect that impressed me with Gross's interviewing skills was the amount of knowledge she had of the issue. She had obviously read the book, as well as other people's opinions on the Supreme Court. Gross' intelligent side comments and examples really helped me to understand the extent of the issue while prompting Greensberg to expand on them and relate to other cases.

She probably already knew the news relevance since she decided to interview her today, but Gross explicitly asked what was coming up relating to the issue. She made the interviewee explain that we are in a situation where the votes of the Supreme Court could be changing. Gross also asked what she had learned about the newest member of the court. This really shows the ability of the reporter to keep the topic newsworthy for the readers.

She asked many open-ended questions without saying, "can you please comment on this?" Gross did this by commenting on related topics and prompting her to go in different directions. She did seem to hint at the underlying common opinion when asking the questions, framing Greensberg's responses. The interview seemed more like a dialogue, where Gross just encouraged Greensberg to keep talking about the subject.

What do you think about the interview???